The top Army general in the West, Lt. Gen. J.L. DeWitt, raised quite a
stir in Oregon when he demanded that Governor Sprague remove "hobos"
from trains passing through forest areas. The general voiced concern
about the "possibility of forest fires being started by saboteurs,
disguised as hobo train riders." DeWitt particularly objected that
hobos were sent through a revolving door of arrest, suspended sentence,
and release
- often back to the train. In fact, he complained that "it is not uncommon
for peace officers to take these defendants to the railroad yards and
see that they leave by freight train." DeWitt wanted Sprague to lean
on police and judges to "vigorously enforce and prosecute offenders."(12)

Oregon officials were less than sympathetic. State Police Superintendent
Charles Pray wryly noted that "the General is tackling a pretty difficult
social problem on the mere chance that some saboteur may elect to masquerade
as a hobo." He sarcastically wrote how grateful officials would be
for DeWitt's suggestions for solving the "vexatious" problem.(13) Sprague,
usually compliant with Army requests, instead lectured the general: "Most
of them [hobos] are harmless merely taking this way of living out their
earthly existence." He claimed that the "only cure is to herd
them all in camps and subsist them at public expense."(14)

While DeWitt managed to persuade Washington Governor Arthur Langlie to
write a bland form letter about the issue to police chiefs and justices
of the peace in his state, Sprague would have none of it in Oregon: "I
hardly feel like issuing a general order to enforcement officers covering
the
subject of hobos riding on the trains. It is prohibited by law and the
law is
known to everyone; and frankly I do not see any particular menace from
the reduced numbers of hobos who are now riding the trains."(15) With
that, Oregon's hobos apparently continued on their perpetual journey
through life - by train.

An Enemy in Our Midst?
Throughout the months and years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, military
and civilian defense officials in Oregon and along the Pacific Coast circulated
correspondence
labeled secret, restricted, or confidential. They shared sightings, reports,
and
analysis
detailing the
possibility of further attacks or sabotage in Oregon and warned of spies
operating in our society.

The real threat of sabotage
Civilian defense officials were tense in the weeks after Pearl Harbor.
They were scrambling to shore up plans while coping with the influx of
citizens wanting to help and offering advice or rumors. The heightened
state of alert for sabotage and other enemy acts was apparent in a Christmas
Eve letter to the Oregon Defense Council from the Army at Fort Lewis,
Washington warning that "it is the crafty nature of our enemy to choose
those periods when the country is least likely to guard, to launch their
attacks."(1)

Later
confidential correspondence described the need for vigilance
along the Oregon coast. The beaches, inlets, and sparse population of
the area offered "innumerable opportunities for the landing of such
agents from Japanese submarines.... It is likely that enemy spies or
other hostile
agents will be landed at points where they can make contact with disloyal
elements resident in the vicinity." Further possibilities for saboteurs
to enter would be to transfer them from a submarine to a fishing boat
and then go openly into port. Experts discounted the likelihood of
entry by parachute. (view PDF-2 pages)(2)

Officials saw plenty of potential targets for saboteurs, including military
and government property, bridges, and forests. Early on, the Army also
warned that telephone, radio, and telegraph companies were "not only
especially vulnerable, but that they are likely to be one of the earliest
targets of
acts of sabotage."(3)
The assumption was that the enemy would try to break the lines of communication
in an attack.

A simple matchbook was all a saboteur needed in summer to start a forest fire in Oregon.

Summertime brought heightened fears of sabotage. Civilian defense officials
saw four main threats from arson, explosion, mechanics, and psychology.
Not all sabotage had to be spectacular. In fact, sometimes subtle was better.
For example, officials noted that in the summertime with dry grasses and
forests "the packet of book matches becomes the simplest but most effective
aid to the arsonist." Likewise, machinery, already running hot from summer
temperatures, could be destroyed with friction by using abrasives or just
by letting the lubricants run dry.(4) Concern
about food sabotage also surfaced. Governor Sprague was asked by federal
officials to "direct all civilian police agencies in your state
to arrest any Japanese who is seen or known to be plowing under or damaging
crops...." The request stated that "the destruction of growing foodstuffs
is outright sabotage and will be dealt with accordingly."(5)

J. Edgar Hoover kept the hunt for saboteurs in the public eye. (Image courtesy
FBI)

Suspicious characters
The best defense was vigilance - keeping an eye out for suspicious activity
- especially in smaller towns. Oregonians were encouraged to "clear your
suspicious characters or strangers through the FBI.... Remember too that
NO INFORMATION IS TOO INSIGNIFICANT to be turned into the FBI." It was
simple: "You furnish the leads, FBI will establish the facts." While
encouraging citizens to report the slightest suspicions, officials at the
same time
cautioned that it was "no time for witch-hunting. Hysteria is a form
of sabotage itself."(6) The
subtlety between the two admonishments may have been lost on many Oregonians.
But undoubtedly, many small town busy-bodies erred
on the side of reporting insignificant information.

Vigilance was reinforced, especially early in the war, by periodic reports
of suspected sabotage. Perhaps most shocking were the small
German sabotage squads that landed in June 1942 on Long Island, New York
and Ponte Vedra, Florida. Having lived in the United States before the
war, the eight men spoke fluent English, knew American customs, and had
been trained at a special sabotage school near Berlin. The teams landed
in rubber rafts
launched from U-boats and carried a large supply of explosives and incendiaries,
intent on targeting aluminum plants, river locks, and rail lines. The plot
quickly fell apart as officials rounded up both teams,
the Long Island team after a comedy of errors. One of the leaders was a
bitter naturalized
German
American who felt cheated in life, apparently the impetus of his actions.
While doing no damage, the plot gave civilian defense officials tangible
proof of the threat of sabotage to the country.(7)

Maintaining the vigilance against sabotage in the general population, however,
proved increasingly difficult after the Allies had gained the initiative
in the last two years of the war. Characteristically, FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover was up to the challenge. At the end of 1944,
Hoover cautioned against complacency and warned that "the enemy has made
many attempts to penetrate our inner defenses." He then went on to describe
one such attempt a month before when two enemy agents were caught in New
York City. A German U-boat brought them to the coast of Maine where they
landed on the beach using a rubber raft. One of the agents was American
born and had been discharged earlier by the Marine Corps. According to
Hoover, both had been trained in the "Hitler school on the handling of
short wave radio and sabotage methods." They were carrying a short wave
radio and $60,000 in cash when they were arrested.(8)

The specter of the fifth column
Fear of domestic subversives or "fifth columnists" also reached
its heights in the months after Pearl Harbor. But it began earlier as Americans
watched the
collapse of western Europe in 1940 and concluded that domestic saboteurs
had added to the debacle. Of course the fear of internal sabotage manifested
itself most visibly in the removal of Japanese Americans along the West
Coast to
relocation camps inland. Yet, Japanese Americans were far from the only
perceived threat.

Potential fifth columnists
Officials in the Northwest categorized the fifth column threat in a restricted
1944 plan that included the following types of people as potential domestic
subversives:

"Enemy
agents and sympathizers, including persons having personal or political
grievances against the United States and those amendable to promises of
money or power.

Those
with property or close relatives in enemy, enemy-occupied, or pro-enemy
countries. Those
educated in, residents therein of a long period, or frequent visitors
to enemy countries. Enemy
agents disguised as refugees.

Fanatics,
citizens or aliens, such as extreme radicals, pacifists, religious zealots,
habitual criminals (especially arsonists), racketeers, and those in narcotic
or other vice rings, and unbalanced, perverted, and thwarted individuals
such as sadists, frustrated "geniuses," disgruntled failures and swindlers.

Members
of so-called minority groups stirred by subversive propaganda to resentment
against the United States and its military forces or imbued with the possibility
of utilizing the war to gain special social or political advantage." (view
PDF-16 pages)(9)

Fifth column operations
These broad groups of suspected Americans were seen to have ominous
intentions. Officials classified a number of potential operations that
included sniping; spreading false rumors; issuing false orders; causing
panic and riot; signaling the enemy from the ground; storing gasoline,
vehicles, or other supplies for advancing hostile forces; and other organized
acts of sabotage in support of the enemy. Oddly enough, the plan cited
the dearth of actual sabotage as evidence of the cunning of the enemy: "The
lack of proven enemy-inspired sabotage to date confirms the possibility
that the Fifth
Column is well disciplined and is awaiting planned and unified major
action when directed."(10)

In the end, fears about widespread fifth column activity in the United
States proved groundless. Certainly, there were plots that included Americans,
such as the two on the East Coast described above, but little came of
them. During the war the FBI investigated 19,649 cases of suspected internal
sabotage
but failed to find any that were directed by the enemy. Yet, at the time
there were enough stories and rumors to make people say: "It could happen
here."(11)

Loose lips sink ships
Even as Oregonians worried about their neighbor, the potential
fifth columnist saboteur, they also fretted about the spies in their
midst.

Censorship and spies
Censorship was a fact of life during the war. Some restrictions were obvious.
For example, all mail entering
or leaving the country was subject to censorship. So by 1942, a million
pieces of mail were read and censored by 10,000 civil servants. Censors
also checked the mail for useful information about the enemy. GIs writing
home could not mention anything about the military situation they saw and
their families were encouraged to write back with happy, non-specific letters
that avoided reference to the workplace.

The
federal Office of Censorship also devised a voluntary code for broadcasters
and publishers.
It restricted
news that could be valuable to the enemy, for example, information on
troop or ship movements and the number of battle casualties. Other restrictions
were less obvious. Radio programmers were banned from doing "man on the
street" interviews and had to stop music request shows. The Office of
Censorship contended that these shows could be exploited by spies to transmit
coded
messages.

Education
Meanwhile, government officials launched a massive publicity campaign
to educate Americans on the potential harm of seemingly harmless conversation,
even
with close friends and relatives. An example of the reasoning saw
one friend innocently telling the latest happenings from work to another
friend who would then mention the news at a bar where a spy was
listening,
ready to transmit the information to the enemy. News about design or production
of ships, airplanes, and other war assets could be particularly harmful.
Before long posters bearing slogans such as "Enemy agents are always
near; if you don't talk they won't hear" were tacked to walls in factories
and shipyards across the country as America responded to the threat.